This invention relates to a transfer press and more particularly, to a device in the transfer press for feeding a work through successive operation stations in the transfer press by three-dimensional movement of feed bars in the press.
The three-dimensional movement referred to herein means the movement involving the actions of the feed bars such as (a) clamping, (b) lifting, (c) advance, (d) descent, (e) unclamping and (f) return as seen in FIG. 1.
As conventional three-dimensional feed mechanisms in transfer presses, the so-called cam-, lever- and planetary gear-type feed mechanisms have been well known. However, these prior art three-dimensional feed mechanisms can not satisfy the requirements that the construction is compact, that the lifting and clamping actions are provided by a common single drive source, that the translation from the clamping action to the lifting action and that from the descending action to the unclamping action are perpendicularly effected eliminating any laptime between the successive actions and acceleration and deceleration of the actions are smooth to thereby perform the feed operation at high rates.